


only happy people have nightmares

by deathrae



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: (I mean I'm not), (anyway), (but like), Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, I'm Sorry, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, like a lot of feelings, spoilers up through 3x17, well arguably through 3x18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-04-28 19:15:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14455965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: The hard part is over, and like with so many of the things that happen to the Legends, there's a whole lot left to unpack. And maybe when it comes down to it, Sara and Ava work so well together because they see each other in a way most people don't.And because they know when to communicate, well,nonverbally.





	1. it takes ten times as long to put yourself together

**Author's Note:**

> WELP guess I've fallen into a new ship. Send help? (I mean don't, cuz. I'm fine, honestly.)
> 
> (Story title from Guy Sajer's _The Forgotten Soldier._ Chapter titles from Suzanne Collins' _Mockingjay._ )

Sara has a dozen different smiles, and Ava has learned a few of them. By now Ava’s learned a lot of things about Sara Lance, really. The contents of her file, for starters: a lengthy affair that painted a picture of a woman Ava classified, privately, as a deeply flawed, reckless individual who held zero regard for rules and regulations and operated on pure gut instinct, at best, and on whim and flights of fancy, at worst.

And to be fair, a lot of that is true, regardless of what else Ava learned about the Legends since.

Then there’s the intervening missions. She learns that Sara isn’t so much reckless as she is burdened by an extremely _unconventional_ team. Ava finds, to her immense surprise, context that puts Sara’s status as _Trained by the League of Assassins_ and _Part of Rip Hunter’s First Disastrous Attempt_ in new light. Ava decides it isn’t quite right to say that Sara lacks regard for rules. It’s more that she’s seen systems and rules fail so often and so utterly that she uses her judgement rather than accepting anything at face value. She doesn’t so much blindly trust her gut as she plays a longer game. She sees the patterns, and works with what she has.

And then Sara starts to _really_ surprise her.

When Ava sees Sara give up Hunter, she starts to pay more attention. She finally allows herself to see Sara’s strong moral center, her sense of _right_ rather than _right for right now_. Ava sees her compassion, a duality that surprises her at the time. Sara hands Rip over for what happened with Darhk, yes, but it isn’t just the personal betrayal. What happened to the Bureau’s agents was wrong, and Sara knows it too.

And then she surprises Ava again, and Ava sees something she never expected to see.

She sees Sara _grieve_.

Ava’s call to offer condolences is supposed to be a semblance of routine. Granted, Sara—still Captain Lance, then—isn’t the commander of a Bureau team. There is no paperwork, there is no protocol for what happens next, and there are no rules the Legends need to care about with regard to who notifies Stein’s next of kin and when, or how. There is no reason Ava is required to contact her. But it’s right. And so she does.

And what strikes her most is the grief, hidden behind walls built of habit and sarcasm meant to prevent anyone, in particular Ava—still Agent Sharpe, then—from seeing how bad it is. From seeing the way that loss, that perceived failure of leadership, has torn a hole in her heart and left it open, bleeding.

Ava decides, after what in reports she calls _The 1000 A.D. Incident_ but privately calls _The_ _Beebo Day Debacle_ , that Sara defies description. She is passionate and unrelenting, courageous and defiant. And she is all those things from behind layers upon layers of obfuscation. She has her official face, the one Ava first met. The face that is fierce and furious. Rage and self-righteousness, masked with bluster and bravado. And for a long, _long_ time, that is all Ava can see. But there’s so much more to her, and dressed in absurd Viking costumes, Ava finally starts to see it. The softness. Where Ava is a steel rod, Sara is an old tough tree, with just enough flexibility, just enough _give_ , that when anything tries to break her, she never stays bowed for long.

Ava learns still more from their conversations. The real, very human connection they build, bit by bit. Ava is loath to admit it, but there’s a special place in her heart and in her memory for those stolen moments and secret chats held where the Legends couldn’t eavesdrop. The conversations held in jumpships and private offices with doors shut and, on occasion, AI surveillance thwarted. Those tiny snapshot instants where Sara, against all sense, and against all the odds, sets aside a couple of the smokescreens and actually lets Ava in, a little at a time.

It shocks her. And it reaches into her chest and squeezes tight.

Sara is warm. Maybe that’s what surprises Ava most. Far warmer than anyone would ever have expected a League-trained, once-resurrected assassin to be. Warm in words and in deeds both. The warmth, Ava learns, is sort of a secret. It’s private, withheld from most and only sparingly shown even to her team. Ava doesn’t think it’s out of pride, or ego, but rather Sara keeps it close to her like it’s something precious. Something she doesn’t want to just blithely spread around. As if she feels she has a limited supply, and doesn’t want to lose what she has left.

And then Ava learns one more thing. Something she thinks the Legends probably guess, but wouldn’t know for sure.

Sara doesn’t get much in the way of _deep sleep_.

Oh sure, she gets enough REM time to survive. And it isn’t exactly right to say that Sara short-changes herself. Ava surmises that a world-class assassin knows better than to allow herself to get sloppy with exhaustion. But damn if she doesn’t cut it close. She works herself hard, training in the _Waverider_ ’s gym for hours at a time, and on the nights the team isn’t dragging themselves across half of history, she pores over the anachronism maps and historical records till Gideon’s lights shift duller and warmer, to simulate evening. Or, in Sara’s case, to simulate midnight.

Ava counts herself pretty good at observation, but at first even she doesn’t notice that Sara never wakes out of dreams. Until that once, with the nightmare. Maybe that’s why the memory ends up burned across Ava’s mind like a brand.

 

_Soft in sleep, gentle at the edges of waking. A sound. Soft, first, then louder. The silken-slip sliding sound of skin against sheets. Movement, enough that she wakes up just a little more._

**_No,_** _Sara whispers in the dark. **Leave me be.**_

_Ava isn’t really awake yet. Concern tugs at her like a fish nipping at a floating lure. Pulls once._

**_John,_** _Sara whispers._

_There’s fear in her voice. Something hovering at the edge of panic. Ava’s eyes flutter open. Sara doesn’t move but her mouth is working soundless and terrified around swallowed words. The rest of her is limp, still asleep, paralyzed, but twitching. Training trying desperately to overcome biology._

**_John!_**

__

_Ava freezes. This has never happened before. Part of her is afraid to shake an ex-assassin, ex-vigilante awake._

__

_Sara moves. Eyes open, sitting up a few inches on her elbows. She lets out a breath like a bellows._

__

**_It’s okay,_** _Ava murmurs. Sara’s shoulder is fever-hot under her hand. **Hey, I’m right here.**_

__

_Sara drops back down on the pillows and Ava moves her hand. A slide, hot skin under her fingers. She rests her palm over the hollow of Sara’s throat. There’s a danger in it. Touching her like this. Barely an inch from a choke, but Sara allows it. She **lets** Ava touch her and that says more than an entire encyclopedia ever could. Sara’s fingers curl hot and tight around Ava’s wrist, finding her, holding her, knowing she’s there._

__

**_Here I thought you gave nightmares,_** _Ava murmurs. **Not have them.**_

__

_Sara has a dozen different smiles. Ava doesn’t know them all yet, but she knows that smile. The fragile smile that covers up fear and grief. Sara closes her eyes, as if she can’t admit this with her eyes open._

__

**_First time for everything._ **

__

 

__

“Hey, Sara,” Ava says, later, when it’s all over and has begun again. Some mornings—well, most mornings, especially now that the Legends are getting busy again with new problems, new solutions—Ava stays for breakfast and a bit of training. Sparring with Sara is scary, but exhilarating.

__

And sometimes, it ends with the two of them flat on their backs, heads side-by-side and bodies aching with exertion and fledgling pain from new bruises. Ava glances toward Sara. Sara, like Ava, is sheened in sweat, the gym’s lights reflecting off her forehead, her neck, her bare shoulders. The physical results of her work thus far. That thought makes Ava’s gut twist with a raw, all too familiar feeling of desire, but she also feels a surge of satisfaction—Ava really _can_ keep pace with Sara.

__

(Though to be fair, Ava hadn’t _really_ doubted that ever since their first altercation in the halls of the _Waverider_ herself. And for a moment, the mirrored positions of that first water break is so vivid she almost has to laugh.)

__

“Mm.”

__

“Question for you.”

__

Sara’s soft, warm chuckle _does_ things to her. “Hm?”

__

Ava isn’t sure when this game started. Maybe it was that first disastrous date in the restaurant in Star City, when Sara had smiled one of her smiles (the one that was amused but maybe still a little guarded) and leaned back in her chair and murmured _well, what do you want to know?_ Maybe it doesn’t matter when it _started_ , so much as it matters that it never quite _stopped_ , even after pirates and rum floats and hours spent away from the Legends’ prying eyes and Gideon’s surveillance cameras.

__

However it started, every now and then when it was quiet and the ease of comfortable coexistence was sprawling between them like a languid cat, Ava would ask a question, and Sara would always answer. The rules were completely unspoken, but when it was like this, when things were just a little bit heavy with the silence, when she rolls her head to look at Sara and speaks more slowly, more deliberately, Ava never doubts that Sara knows the difference between a question and a _Question_. And Ava knows, bone-deep and without question, without hesitation, that when she asks like that, Sara always tells her the truth.

__

“You said to me once that you don’t get nightmares.”

__

Sara grins, glances right to see Ava, then looks up again. “Mm, _not_ really a question.”

__

“Do you do it on purpose?”

__

Sara stares at the ceiling for so long Ava thinks she’s going to break pattern and ignore the question, but then she moves, turning her head a little to look toward Ava. Long curls of blonde sprawl around her head where they’ve spilled out of their clips, errant and haphazard and so unrepentantly beautiful it makes Ava’s breath catch in her throat. For half a breath she wants to forget the question and just reach out and set her hand on Sara’s cheek, to say _to hell_ with verbal communication. Nonverbal has always been one of their specialties, anyway.

__

And then the corner of Sara’s mouth twitches up into a fraction of a smile.

__

“Yes.”

__

“You didn’t ask what ‘it’ was,” Ava says.

__

“Don’t need to,” Sara says, and shrugs. Horizontal on the floor, the gesture looks a little odd. “You’re asking if I work out, work late, and set my alarm at odd times to avoid waking up directly out of a dream.”

__

Ava props herself up on her elbow, hissing out a breath. “ _That’s_ why Gideon ignores all my instructions about your snooze button?”

__

Sara grins and sits up, leaning on one hand so she could turn and look down at Ava’s face. Sara has a dozen different smiles, but this is one of her most honest ones. Bright and wide and delighted. “See? Didn’t need to ask.”

__

“Why?”

__

For a moment Ava expects Sara to sass her, to answer _why not_ instead of _why do you do it._ But then Sara’s grin falters, flickers like an old tv set, and she pulls another one of the dozen out of her repertoire. This is one of her sadder smiles, fragile and cautious, burdened under the weight of a secret.

__

“Because I’ve done a lot of things,” Sara says. “Things that...” She pauses, reconsiders her words. Ava sits up and tucks one leg under her so she’s level with Sara’s shoulders, their noses hardly a foot apart. The other she lays flat on the ground under Sara’s body, her knee resting against Sara’s ribs. It isn’t _comfort_ , or at least it doesn’t have to look like it, but it’s something similar. Something that says _I’m here_ without words. Sara’s gaze slides away from Ava’s face. “Things that I regret. So I can’t stop. Because if I do—”

__

“You’ll have to look at them,” Ava suggests. “And see them for what they are.”

__

Sara blows out a breath and meets Ava’s eye again. “Yeah.”

__

“You’re scared,” Ava says. It comes out as little more than a whisper, soft and stunned as the realization hits her like a punch to the gut.

__

“Pff– _no_ ,” Sara says, all bluster until Ava _looks_ at her. “Okay, yes. Maybe.”

__

“You’re scared that...” Ava twists her mouth at the corner and there’s a creeping sadness crawling up through her chest, using her ribs like footholds until it can get cold little fingers around her throat and squeeze. “You’re scared that if you have to look it in the eye you’ll find out you’re like the others.”

__

Sara glances away from her and brings out another of her smiles, the one that’s tired and a little fake and barely masking how much she hurts. Sara Lance does everything with her whole self, and the pain of a life no ordinary person could ever dream of is just proof of concept. “In the League we’d call what you just did _hesitation_.”

__

For a moment frustration roars through her chest and Ava almost bites words out— _I’m not trying to hurt you, I’m trying to make a point_ —but she pushes that down. Sometimes you have to break bones to set them.

__

“You think you’re like Darhk.”

__

“See.” Sara doesn’t flinch, but her eyes flick over to look at Ava again. “ _There’s_ your finish.”

__

“You’re not,” Ava says.

__

“I know—”

__

“No, let me finish,” Ava says, and Sara’s mouth snaps shut. She just sits, waiting, still leaning on her hand. Her side presses against Ava’s leg on every breath, even and patient with a calm that Ava can see isn’t coming easy to her. She meets Ava’s eyes, and Ava sees a fraction of a wall coming back up, blocking off whatever was behind the piercing blue of her gaze.

__

“Okay.”

__

“You’re not like him,” Ava says again. “I get it now, I think, what happened. With us. You think the fact that you could both use the Death Totem means you’re alike. You think that if you stop and face what happened, if you stop and remember all the little things, it’ll all drag you down. You think that if you ever gave yourself time to think about all of it, you’d have to look at the fact that you hollowed yourself out to cope. So you keep yourself busy, with work, with this,” she looks around to indicate her meaning. “With other people.”

__

That, Ava sees, strikes a nerve, because it’s only then that Sara looks away. Not from shame, Ava thinks, but discomfort. Ava _sees_ her, and they both know it, and maybe it’s more than she can really take.

__

“You’re walking the line between what he was and the closest thing to normalcy you can get and you think...” Ava’s throat goes tight and she swallows, hard. Her eyes burn, just at the edge of tears, but she ignores that and tilts her head to try to catch Sara’s eye. “You think that if you look down, you’re gonna see that you’re knee-deep in it and that you can’t climb back out.”

__

Sara lets out a breath, almost a laugh, and starts to shake her head until Ava presses her forehead against Sara’s, warm and real and alive.

__

“But you’re not.”

__

Sara looks up at her, her lips moving, just for a second, on a silent question.

__

“You’re not, Sara, because you’re so much different than him. You have the Legends. You have _you_. You won’t ever be like him. You _can’t_ ever be like him. Because he gave up. He gave in. And you never, _never_ do.”

__

Sara leans into her, quiet for a moment. Her breath is warm against Ava’s skin and just a little too fast. “Mm. Good speech,” she says, and there’s something in the tone, in the cadence, that takes Ava back to the saloon in Salvation. She grins, and Sara leans in, pressing her lips to Ava’s, a searing kiss that shakes the creeping sorrow from its perch on her collarbones and fills her chest with warmth.

__

“Hm,” Ava says, pulling back after a moment even though every part of her is yelling to lean back in and pick up where she’d left off.

__

“What?”

__

“Think I have an idea on how to really make my point. Nonverbally.”

__

Sara grins and raises an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”

__

Ava gets to her feet, dusting her hand off on her pants before offering it to Sara. “Come on.”

__

Sara smiles another one of her smiles—that sly one where she presses her lips together like she was trying to keep herself from blurting out her thoughts, which were usually, in this kind of circumstance, _damn that’s hot_ —and takes Ava’s hand, though she hardly needs the help. As she stands she leans into Ava’s space, pressing her body closer so that she slides up Ava’s thighs, along her stomach, until they were pressed chest to chest. Sara uncoils like a cat, firm and flexible, and the _want_ that sparks in Ava’s belly just then almost throws all her rational thought out an airlock. The arch of Sara’s eyebrows and the soundless ‘o’ of her mouth says _sorry about that_ but the flare of heat in her eyes says _completely intentional_ and Ava forces herself to take a steadying breath, counting all the reasons not to just grab her, pin her to a wall, and get _going_ already.

__

They were still in a common area. The Legends could walk by any second. Gideon’s cameras were _everywhere._

__

She clears her throat and forces her gaze up from where Sara’s body is pressed to hers.

__

“Tempting,” she murmurs, looping an arm around Sara’s lower back to hold her in place. There’s something intoxicating in knowing that Sara could pull away in a heartbeat if she chose, but instead she stays, she _allows_ the tight, even possessive grip. “But I’m pretty sure half your team would take photographs if they caught us in here.”

__

Sara laughs, so honest and musical that it makes Ava smile too, infectious and bright. “Yeah, and the other half would stammer and cover their eyes.”

__

“Mm,” Ava says, and finally pulls away to grab her water bottle. She heads for the door. “I _think_ that’s just Ray.”

__

“You have me there,” Sara says, but there’s no answering footsteps that say she’s following. Ava turns around when she’s halfway to the hall, and finds Sara’s gaze has dropped to watch her move, her smile shifting into something molten and a bit hungry.

__

“Honestly,” Ava says, with a sigh. “You have all the subtlety of a brick to the head.”

__

“Aw come on!” Sara objects, jogging to catch up. “Can’t blame me for enjoying the view. Besides. Sometimes, as I think my team has shown, saving time _requires_ a brick to the head.”

__

 

__

What Ava has with Sara has always been a tableau of extremes, and this is no exception. As soon as the door to Sara’s quarters hisses shut and Sara’s given a muttered command to Gideon, Sara’s hands find Ava’s hips in the semi-darkness, sliding up and catching Ava’s shirt with her thumbs. Ava inhales, sharp and already a little ragged as Sara’s fingers, callused and hard from her work, trail fire across Ava’s ribs, pulling her shirt over her head and dropping it somewhere on her floor. Ava returns the favor, grasping at Sara’s shirt and dragging her fingers up Sara’s back in the same motion, scratching with her nails until Sara hisses and arches forward against her in a sinuous slide that’s like what she’d done in the gym but more intense, more... more _something_.

__

Sara’s teeth find her shoulder, tracking sideways and then up Ava’s throat to bite down over the pounding point of her pulse just below her jaw and Ava loses track of it all for a moment. Sara moves fast, always has, given her reflexes and her instincts, and Ava realizes a few moments late that she’s falling backward onto Sara’s bed, naked to the waist. Sara is above her in an instant, straddling her hips, her skin luminous in the dim light. She leans back for a moment, stripping out of her bra, and Ava has time to admire the sinuous arch of her body as she strips, time to watch the light play across her body and where it casts shadows across the pockmarks and lines carved into her flesh by weapons Ava can’t hope to name, all of them new, half of them earned since she joined the _Waverider_.

__

Ava slides her hand up over Sara’s belly and earns a sound, so soft and delicious that Ava finds herself licking her lips. Before she thinks much about it she trails her fingers across the three shadowed marks on Sara’s skin—all that was left behind of the scars from her death—so light that she wouldn’t have known they were there if Sara hadn’t shown her.

__

“Ava,” Sara murmurs, her voice low. She leans forward, bowing over Ava like an altar. Her hair slips down over one shoulder, soft curls trailing across Ava’s chest.

__

“Hm.”

__

“Thought you were making a point?”

__

Ava grins, slow, and slides her hands to Sara’s waist. She rolls her hips up, wringing a gasp from Sara and a slow tightening of the fingers on Ava’s shoulders.

__

“Who says I’m not?”

__

Sara grins, her teeth flashing brilliant in the lamplight. “Cheeky.”

__

Ava laughs and sits up on one elbow, drawing Sara down with a hand on Sara’s jaw, not controlling but leading, and when their lips meet Sara makes a faint noise that’s all but muffled in Ava’s mouth. She makes another when Ava tugs at Sara’s lip with her teeth, pulling her in deeper, deeper, until Ava doesn’t quite remember where she ends and Sara begins.

__

She knows on some level Sara needs this because when Ava flips them over, laying Sara out flat on her back on her own bed, she lets it happen. She goes easily, rolling into it as readily as breathing, and Ava strings kisses down Sara’s throat to her chest, following the sharp line of her sternum. She slides one hand down further, desire tangling itself into knots low in her belly as she traces her fingers down to the button of Sara’s jeans. Sara does everything with her whole self, and this is no different. She bucks, her body flexing and tensing at the light touch of Ava’s fingers and she _trembles_ , violently, when Ava pauses, her fingers stalling where fabric meets soft, unmarked skin.

__

“Ava,” Sara says, not pleading, but something adjacent, hard and desperate.

__

Ava lays another kiss between Sara’s breasts and runs her hand down further, sliding between Sara’s legs. She leans her head back out of something like habit, pulling her nose out of range as Sara arches her body up in a sudden bow. Her fingers are tangling into the sheets, pulling so hard Ava’s surprised she hasn’t torn them.

__

“ _Ava_ ,” Sara says again, and she’s hiding it less this time, how much she _wants_. Ava feels the desire as a sympathetic pang in her own body, insistent and clawing at her belly, but she’s on a mission, now, and god help the one who stands in her way.

__

She rubs her thumb along the seam of Sara’s jeans, pressing hard, and Sara _bucks_ , trying to force her hand. Ava would almost laugh if the sight of Sara, sprawled on her back, half-naked and with her hair falling around her head in a haphazard spray of blonde against her light blue sheets, didn’t take her breath away.

__

Another pass of her hand makes Sara cry out, and then—and only then—does Ava take pity on her. She slides the button free and the sound of Sara’s zipper is lost under the string of low, needy little sounds Sara makes as Ava leans down and tracks tiny, nipping kisses along the column of Sara’s neck. Ava tugs Sara’s pants down, just a little, just enough to give her room to slide her hand in under the fabric, to slip her fingers across impossibly slick skin.

__

There’s a part of her that knows she should just ditch the pants entirely, give herself more room to move her fingers, but there’s something powerful in it, in these times they need each other so desperately they can’t be bothered to actually get their clothes all the way off. She feels it, and she knows Sara does—especially judging by the way Sara’s voice rings out then, unrestrained and unrepentant.

__

One of her hands paws across the sheets to find Ava’s hip, short nails scratching for a moment until she finds the waistband of Ava’s pants, and she curls her fingers into it for a handhold.

__

“Ava,” Sara says, and she _whimpers_ , and Ava smiles, because the other thing she’s learned about Sara Lance is the timbre of her voice when she’s begging, when she’s too far gone to care about what Ava will think of her.

__

“I’ve got you, Lance,” she murmurs, and leans over her, pressing a kiss to Sara’s mouth even as she lets her fingers stray and touch and move, gentle and _present_ against Sara’s skin. Sara keeps one hand on Ava’s pants and the other drags up to tangle into Ava’s hair, curling tight and _tugging_ and dragging a haggard groan from Ava’s throat before she can stop herself. She slides her fingers in deep and rests her thumb on Sara’s clit, rubbing tight circles that have Sara keening against Ava’s mouth in seconds.

__

It’s not hard, this time, not fast. Ava’s trying to make a point, and much as she might want to, _fucking_ Sara won’t do the trick. So she lingers on it, working Sara with slow, easy motion and a kiss that, she hopes, says everything she could never put to words. Sara’s skin beads with sweat and her breath comes harsher, gusting against Ava’s face until it stirs her hair and Ava wets her lips once, then twice, swallowing some of Sara’s sounds in kisses and relishing the others. Sara presses their foreheads together with the hand in Ava’s hair, and Ava knows it’s building, higher and closer, when Sara’s kisses turn clumsy, open-mouthed and instinctual rather than the pinpoint accuracy Ava’s come to expect from a trained assassin.

__

She doesn’t _stop_. Even she’s not that cruel. But she does slow, just when Sara is at the brink of it, panting and desperate and hissing out wordless little phrases of praise and need.

__

“You feel this?” Ava whispers, and she pulls back so she can look at Sara’s face, can watch her look up, bleary-eyed and confused.

__

“Ava, god, what—”

__

“Do you _feel_ _this_ ,” Ava says again, and she shifts her knee to take her weight so she can set her other hand on Sara’s chest, at the hollow of her throat, fingers resting on her neck. Barely an inch from a choke, but Sara allows it. The hand in Ava’s hair is suddenly gone and resting over Ava’s, gripping tight, and even like this, even bare seconds away, Ava sees her brow furrow like she _remembers_ this, like she understands what Ava’s really asking.

__

“Yes, god,” she hisses, and it’s almost a moan, but it’s also an answer. “Yes—Ava, I do, yes.”

__

“This,” Ava breathes, and there’s something rising up in her that isn’t anything to do with what they’re doing but everything to do with what she’s saying. The feeling chokes her, so that her words come out a little strangled, but whole. “ _This._ ” She presses down with her palm, not choking her, but applying pressure just about level with her collarbones. “You can’t be hollow and feel this, Sara.”

__

“Ava, _please_ —”

__

“Say it,” she whispers, and she can feel the hot wet tracks of tears on her cheeks but she almost can’t understand how. She knows, but it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t quite seem plausible.

__

“Ava!”

__

“Say it, Sara,” Ava says, and presses a little harder, works her thumb a little bit tighter against her. “Please.”

__

“I’m not,” Sara gasps, and she tilts her head back, eyes slipping shut on something that’s half agony and half ecstasy. “I’m not hollow. I’m not like them—”

__

Ava makes a sound that is somewhere halfway between a groan and a sob, and she flexes her fingers, and there’s an edge in it now that wasn’t there before, something sharp and a bit too heavy. Sara lets out a rasping, aching cry, her grip on Ava’s hand so tight it hurts, but Ava ignores it, works her through it, gasps at the sensation of Sara tightening around her fingers in spasms and pulsing in time with the ache in Ava’s own body.

__

And then. Then it’s over, and Ava settles, but she doesn’t move. Sara slings an arm over her eyes, and bites her lip, and makes a sound that makes Ava’s heart ache, because it’s far too much like a sob. Ava sets a hand on Sara’s hip and squeezes gently, a signal, and Sara’s breath hitches when Ava pulls her fingers free but she doesn’t say anything, doesn’t complain as Ava moves away and picks up one of their discarded shirts to dry her hand.

__

When she settles back down on the bed Sara hasn’t moved. She still has half her face hidden. Ava leans over her and Sara _trembles_ but she doesn’t fight when Ava pulls her arm down and looks at her face. Even like this, _especially_ like this, flushed red and tear-streaked and still catching her breath, she’s the most beautiful woman Ava has ever known.

__

“Well,” Sara mutters, and her mouth twists into something like a grin. A cover. A dodge. But not, Ava thinks, in a bad way. “Uh. That was.”

__

“Yeah,” Ava says. “You okay?”

__

“Wow.”

__

Ava grins and ducks her head. “I hope that wasn’t, uh, bad. What I said.”

__

“No. No, not in the slightest,” Sara says, immediately, and sits up on an elbow, raising her other hand to tuck a few loose curls behind Ava’s ear. Sara presses a kiss to her lips, quick, like tiding herself over for something else. “Earlier, y’know, you forgot someone.”

__

“Hm?”

__

“When you were saying why I can’t be like Darhk.”

__

“Mm.”

__

“You said I had the team. And myself. And you forgot someone.”

__

Ava blinks. Mostly she’s just surprised Sara’s still thinking about it.

__

“I did?”

__

Sara smiles. It’s one of the ones Ava hasn’t seen very much before. It only comes out every now and then, a smile that’s glass-fragile and just a bit wry. The smile Ava first saw in the corridor, when Sara had held Ava’s face gentle and strong in both her hands and whispered _I’m admitting something that could save us both._

__

“I have you.”

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so you guys know, this story was almost, _almost,_ titled “legends never come quietly either”


	2. as it does to fall apart

Sara isn’t really sure how long they were asleep in her bed. God knows she needed it, though, after Ava brought her back to her own quarters to take her apart, piece by piece, and make her _feel_ as much as she did. But at some point they ended up under her blanket, and at some point, they dozed off. She wakes up first, and for a moment she isn’t sure what woke her. Gideon isn’t demanding her attention. There’s no one knocking on her door. She scans the corners of the rooms in a practiced pattern, looking right first and scanning left, forcing her brain not to skip over oddities out of habit.

There’s no one. No one lurking in the corners or hiding in the shadows. Sara frowns, and settles, and considers the value of getting up to start her day, for real this time, versus staying in bed with Ava a little longer. Calling a compromise, she props herself up on her elbow and looks down at Ava. Ava’s rolled away from her at some point, so that she has her back toward Sara. There’s a touch of pain on her face that Sara decides she doesn’t like, a tension drawing lines between her eyebrows and around her eyes.

Ava has a dozen frowns, and Sara’s seen nearly all of them by now. But none of them make her heart ache like the one Ava’s wearing now. Ava makes a faint noise that Sara can only describe as _distressed_ , and it makes her chest hurt. For a moment Sara sits there, frozen, not sure what she should do.

Seeing Ava like this floods her with too many thoughts and emotions to count. Concern is at the forefront, and a raw, untested affection that Sara doesn’t know how to catalogue. But behind those is an almost guilty sense of voyeurism. Sure, Ava is her girlfriend, they’ve been through so much together already and no doubt there’s much more on the horizon, but she hasn’t really seen Ava like this. Ava is always so composed, so... so _Ava_. Seeing her here, now, like this—fitful and upset and tender in sleep—even now, even after they’ve been dating for months, there’s a tiny part of Sara that feels like she shouldn’t be here for this.

“Nn. No, please,” Ava mumbles, the words barely loud enough for Sara to really understand them, and Ava curls up a little more under the blanket. She _whimpers_ , and enough is enough. Sara may not know what she’s dreaming about, but it’s clear it isn’t something nice. Sara reaches for her shoulder. Ava’s warm from the blankets and limp with sleep, and Sara shakes her, just a little.

“Ava,” Sara murmurs, shifting herself a little closer. “Hey. Wake up.”

“I’m not like you,” Ava says, more clearly this time. Her mouth twists with a pain that Sara feels echoing in her own heart, and suddenly she knows all too well what this dream must be.

The AVA Corporation facilities. The lab they saw in 2213.

For a moment Sara feels a bit silly. Really, what else could it have been? Of course this haunts her. It haunts Sara, too, in her own way, but that’s different, and she doesn’t even dare to compare the two.

“Ava,” she says again, more loudly, and she slides an arm under Ava’s, curling tight around her chest to pull her backward. It’s a strange arrangement, holding Ava against her body when Ava is so much taller than she is, but she makes it work, by sheer spite if nothing else. “Ava, come on. You don’t have to stay there. Come back to me.”

Ava makes a soft sound. Sad, and maybe a little confused.

Sara kisses the back of her neck, her nose buried in Ava’s hair, mussed from sparring and sex and sleep and still smelling a little like sweat and love and shampoo.

“Come home,” she whispers, where her lips shape the words against Ava’s skin.

Sara doesn’t see Ava open her eyes, but she feels the tension of wakefulness rattle through Ava’s body like a shockwave, hears the sharp inhale as she orients back to where she is, and who she’s with.

“Welcome back,” Sara murmurs, and smiles into the curve of Ava’s shoulder.

Ava groans, a wordless expression of all the frustration and tension and lingering unpleasantness that’s buzzing under her skin.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Ava says, but she’s lying. Sara tightens her grip around Ava’s chest and Ava lets out a sigh. “That obvious, huh.”

“I may be the littlest big spoon ever,” Sara says, and she grins against Ava’s shoulder when Ava chuckles, “But I can feel you.” To illustrate she presses her whole body a little more against Ava’s, from where her knees rest under Ava’s knees to their matched hips to where Sara’s breasts are pressed to Ava’s back. “And yeah. It’s pretty obvious.”

“Did I wake you?”

“Maybe,” Sara says, and kisses the back of Ava’s shoulder. “I dunno. Doesn’t matter. Seriously, are you okay?”

Ava opens her mouth to give another knee-jerk answer. It’s Bureau training, Sara thinks. After all, a good agent is always ready with an answer. _No sir, that’s not Julius Caesar, that’s just an impersonator_ or _Yes officer, escaped crocodile. Of course it wasn’t a young ankylosaurid, that would be ridiculous_. But then she stops, like she’s remembered this is different. Like she’s remembered she’s in a private space. That she doesn’t have to impress anyone or fool anyone.

“It’s not awful,” Ava says finally. “Just.”

“It’s a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Ava considers the question, a tremor running through her body when Sara shifts a little behind her, the friction of skin on skin too raw and real to ignore, for either of them. Sara grants her the dignity of pretending she didn’t notice and picks up her head so she can see Ava’s face. Ava has a dozen frowns, and Sara recognizes this one—she’s about five and a half seconds from saying _no, I’m fine_.

“I’m not asking you to put it in words that I’ll understand,” Sara says. She keeps her voice low, gentle. Ava’s gaze flicks up toward her. The blue of her eyes has become a sort of dull, haggard grey in the darkness and the circumstances. “But I’d bet cash money you haven’t talked to anyone about it.”

“Can’t exactly take it to a therapist,” Ava notes, and pulls out another one of her frowns—the wry, almost amused one that’s half frustration and half resignation. “Not without ending up in an institution.”

“So talk to me,” Sara murmurs, and leans down a little to kiss Ava’s shoulder.

“I didn’t want to just unload on you,” Ava admits, but she rolls onto her back, sliding one arm under Sara to hold her close. “You’ve got the Legends, you... you shoulder enough problems for enough people as it is.”

Sara arches a decidedly skeptical eyebrow and tilts her head. “Who’s this spot for?”

“Huh?”

“The spot you’re in,” Sara says, nodding to indicate Ava’s place in her bed.

Ava looks around herself, confused, then frowns. Then groans. “Oh god, you found the note.”

“Of course I found the note you _nerd_ ,” Sara says, with an edge of false indignation in her tone to cover her absolute fondness for the woman next to her. “I _do_ in fact do laundry, if you must know. It’s not an intimidating picture of command, me walking around in my jammies while I wait for my sheets and jeans to dry, but it _does_ happen.”

Ava starts laughing, and it sets her off too. She loves Ava’s laugh. It’s a giggling, contented thing, and it’s so at odds with the gloomy government suit Sara first met that it always surprises her, just a little, when Ava lets herself relax enough to laugh, unabashed and unapologetic.

Ava’s fingers curl a little where they rest across her ribs, and the touch sends sparks out from every point of contact, a flare of connection, of affection, of physical desire, that makes Sara shiver.

“So,” Sara says, before she can get completely distracted, “My point being, you have a place on this ship. And...” She pauses, and there’s a softness in Ava’s expression that says she probably doesn’t need to say the rest, but she does anyway. “And in my heart. So.”

“So,” Ava says, a little thoughtful.

“I’m here,” Sara says. Quiet, like a reminder.

Ava watches her for a moment, her eyes scanning, reading something on Sara’s face. “Yeah,” she says finally. “Yeah.”

Sara smiles, pleased, and settles, resting her head on Ava’s shoulder where she can be close, but not forcing eye contact. Giving Ava the space to talk without feeling _watched_.

“I keep dreaming about the lab,” Ava says finally. “In 2213. And it’s all nonsense, dream-logic bullshit, because of _course_ it is, but.” She hesitates, maybe looking for words, and Sara slides her hand up to rest over Ava’s heart. Ava’s reaction is electric and almost melodramatic—her breath hitches, so loudly it sounds painful, and her fingers come up to rest over Sara’s, gripping so tight Sara’s knuckles creak.

Sara wasn’t supposed to interrupt, or at least that was her plan, but now she tilts her head and looks up toward Ava’s face. “What’s wrong?”

Ava’s mouth twists into another of her frowns (the one that’s struggling to be neutral but not quite managing) before she laughs, a little weak and awkward. “Dream-logic bullshit,” she says. It makes more sense to Ava than to Sara, she thinks, but she doesn’t push.

Ava’s description of the dream is halting and full of pauses, but Sara’s known since the restaurant that Ava’s a good storyteller, and the picture she paints is unsettling, at best; horrifying, at worst. Walking into the lab, confused and lost in labyrinthine corporate hallways. Alone, and unarmed, missing her courier and her gear. Calling out, afraid and uncertain, then being grabbed in the dark by a shadow with her own face. Being dragged to a table, where copies of her cut her open, pulling her apart to show her the serial numbers on her own organs, the corporate seams on her manufacture.

“I always wake up feeling just...” She hesitates.

“Empty?” Sara suggests, but it’s not the right answer. She knows it even before she says it, but sometimes you have to miss your target by an inch to make the right one stick.

“Replaceable,” Ava says instead. “Like cells that copy themselves to the point of degradation.”

“You aren’t degraded, Ava.”

“I’m the twelfth Ava to work for the Bureau,” she says, without anger. Without passion. Sara wasn’t sure, but she assumed, since something that Ava said during their talk before Zambesi. “And I just have to wonder. Like you– you said in 2213 that I worked my way up to the top of the Bureau. But did I? Or was I just building on the foundations laid by previous versions of me? Does everyone there think... did Bennett even know that ‘I’ died, _eleven times?_ Do I have a perfect mission record because Rip erased everyone’s memories to think I was the same person?”

“Hey,” Sara says, leaning up on her elbow so she can look Ava in the eye. “You’re not the same person as those other eleven agents. I know,” she says, when Ava opens her mouth to disagree, “I know. But I’m not talking DNA. I’m talking about...” She frowns, pursing her lips in thought. “About _personhood_. You said you read my file. So you know what I was like when I came back from the Lazarus Pit.”

Ava winces, like she still feels it’s a breach of privacy. “Somewhat.”

“I’m not the same person I was when I died,” Sara says, “Not really. It’s me, sure, but it’s also a new, changed version of me, building on top of who I was before.”

Ava frowns another of her dozen frowns, the one that’s thoughtful and a little startled.

“It’s not really an either-or thing, I think. Yes, those eleven agents might have looked like you, might have even acted the same or looked at things in a similar way because– because _sure_ , what are we but the sum of our past experiences, and if they all had the same memories you do, they’re gonna make some of the same calls. Fine. But they’re _not_ you. Not in the ways that matter most.” The corner of Ava’s mouth twists a little and her eyes are red, like she’s trying not to cry, and Sara looks down, looking at Ava’s fingers where they’re still tangled around hers. “Not in the ways that matter to me.”

“Sara,” Ava says, but she sounds hoarse.

“So screw what the Bureau thinks. Screw what Bennett thought. Hell, screw what...” She blows out a breath. The memories are still too new, too confused, and she can’t quite meet Ava’s eyes when she says, “Screw what Rip thought about you.”

“Sara...”

“You’re _Ava Sharpe_. And no matter what that name meant, no matter what happened before, you get to do something that even some _normal_ people can’t figure out how to do.”

“And what’s that?”

“You get to choose who you are. Who you want to be. Fine, so you’ve got a crazy origin story and were made in a lab. All that means is that you fit in perfectly on this ship.”

Ava snorts out a laugh and glances up at her, a fledgling smile curling across her mouth. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

Ava has a dozen frowns, but for a moment, here, safe in Sara’s bed, she’s not wearing any of them.

 

At first Ava’s frowns are an exercise in frustration. Ava uses three of them in just their first meeting alone, interrupted only by that smug, Official Time Bureau-issue smirk that they seem to hand out with the pantsuits, lapel pins, and time couriers. Though, as a boost to Sara’s ego, they were all suspiciously absent in that fight they had in the halls of the _Waverider_. They were too busy scuffling to _frown_ then.

(Sara remembers the dull soreness in her skull after that headbutt. It lingered for days after the fight.)

Sara would be hard pressed to say exactly when she started seeing Ava differently. The Vinland mission was part of it, that much she’s sure of. Saying that Ava _lets her hair down_ for that mission is a bit of a cliché, but it also happens to be true. It’s the first time Sara ever really sees Ava _relax_ , and not only in the sense that she downs horns full of mead like a goddamn professional. And if Sara says she isn’t intrigued by the opportunity presenting itself when Ava tells one of the brutish first-millennial-boneheads _I’m not really the husband kind_ it’s a bald lie, but... but it’s also more complicated than that. Prior to that moment, Ava always seemed more robot than human. A perfect government suit. Learning that she has _preferences_ reminds Sara that she’s also a _woman_.

And all that implies.

And maybe that shift happens in the reverse, too, seeing as the next time they talk, Ava’s hair isn’t up in that oppressive, government-issue bun, but draping down her shoulder like the froth of a wave. Leo’s the one to point out the flirtation with an exhaustingly clinical eye, and it’s supposed to be a joke, maybe, but that night she makes Gideon replay the end of the call four times. Damn him, but he’s right. Ava was broadcasting like a student radio station and it takes Sara nearly an hour to decide why she’d missed it.

Ava actually allows her to _relax_. She’s so hyper-competent, so reliable and by-the-book, that when Ava’s around, Sara has just enough space to stop watching for every flick of shadow, every sudden movement. She can set aside the reflexes and just _exist_ for a damn second. With the side-effect that she isn’t watching for all the signs Ava gives her.

And then once she notices it, it’s hard not to _keep_ noticing. Zari’s comments notwithstanding, she starts to see more in Ava. She goes back through their interactions with a new eye and sees... something that surprises her. She sees how dedicated Ava is, how fierce and protective she is of herself and those around her. She isn’t afraid to push back against her superiors (and her subordinates, if her behavior around Gary is any indication), and she never abandons her principles, even when doing so might be easier.

It doesn’t hurt that Ava is utterly unafraid of going after what she wants, too, which she proves in the _Waverider_ ’s galley the night after their disastrous attempt at a normal date.

Sara isn’t sure when she finally puts a name to what she feels for Ava. It’s terrifying, and electrifying, and at the same time, right, for the first time in ages.

And then it all goes horribly wrong. First the death totem, then 2213.

She almost asks Gideon to check her for whiplash when she comes back from that particular investigation. How did she go from fear to fury to raw, aching empathy in just an hour? And yet, there she is sitting on her bed in her quarters after it’s over, staring at the half-empty bottle of rum they’d shared and wondering what the hell she’s going to do. What do you say to a woman who’s just learned everything she’s ever known has been faked?

Very little, apparently, other than to try to get her to talk to Rip about whatever he’s been hiding. And then they go hurtling into the final days of their fight with Mallus, or Malice, or whatever the hell his name is, and it’s all a bit overwhelming and confusing and they don’t get a chance to talk, to _really_ talk, for days. Leaving Sara with her doubts, and her memories, for company.

 

_She rubs sleep from her eyes after that awful nightmare. Her nerves are still shot from the sight of the little girl convulsing like a demon and her fingers are still twitching and it’s taking everything not to jump at every sound, at every touch. Ava doesn’t need to know how tense she is. Though she can probably feel it in Sara’s hands. She’s observant, and Sara should probably give her the credit she’s due._

_She takes a moment to breathe. The quilt over her feels, for a moment, oppressively heavy, but her bed is warm, and comfortable, doubly so for having Ava in it, and for just a moment she lets herself revel in that. She’s never wanted so badly to stay in bed all day and let the Legends fend for themselves._

_(That would be an unmitigated disaster, though, and she knows it.)_

_Ava is still holding her hand. Ava’s hands aren’t what anyone would call delicate—her palms are broad and her fingers are long and rough from work and they’re always a bit colder than Sara is—but Ava’s touch always puts her a little more at ease. Ava’s hands are so very uniquely her, firm and strong and unapologetic even though they don’t fit what people say women’s hands ‘should’ be like. They’re the kind of hands that belong on a woman who wears a pantsuit nearly 24/7 and there’s something Sara finds just a little comforting in that. Sara thinks, in that moment, that even in the dark, even if she were stricken blind, she’d know Ava’s touch without hesitation. That thought, plus the gentle pressure of Ava’s fingers on hers, makes her chest feel too small for her own heart._

**_So, who’s John?_ **

_Confusion hits first. **What?**_

**_Soon as you called his name out in your sleep._ ** _Ava smiles, but it’s a bit thin. **I was trying very hard not to be jealous.**_

 **_Oh. No, it’s..._ ** _The anxiety hits second, because now she’s going to have to do the one thing you’re really not supposed to do: talk about an ex. While lying in bed with your lover. Sara’s always been one to break rules but this is a bit ridiculous, even for her. **It’s probably John Constantine.**_

_Ava somehow manages to shrug with just her eyes and a flick of her fingers._

**_He’s a demonologist that helped me with Mallus. And he kinda looks like Sting._ **

_There’s a ghost of a grin around Ava’s mouth, but it falters as soon as it shows on her face, like a baby bird stumbling head-first into its own broken shell. **And he’s just a—just a friend?**_

**_Yeah,_ ** _Sara says. **You could say that.**_

_But it’s Ava, and she can’t lie to Ava. So she gathers her thoughts and steels herself for however this is about to play out._

**_Though. We did sleep together, but—_ **

_Ava’s groan of dismay is somehow the most endearing thing Sara’s ever heard._

**_It was the 60s!_ ** _Sara protests. Ava starts to pull away from her and Sara reaches for her. Curls her hand across the small of Ava’s back for leverage so she can pull her back. **And everybody was gettin’ wild!**_

_It feels a little bit like a miracle that Ava allows it, and Sara lets her hand stay, resting on the curve of Ava’s waist. Her body is warm from sleep and heavy blankets and her shirt is soft under Sara’s fingers._

_Ava laughs, soft and maybe a bit fragile. **The 60s, huh.**_

**_Mmhm._ **

**_And I thought I waited a long time between partners._ **

**_The year was 1969, but._ ** _Sara hesitates, but she can’t lie to Ava. **It was like three weeks ago.**_

_Ava leaps up to her elbow like she’s been zapped. **Three weeks?**_

_Sara feels somehow horrifyingly vulnerable with her blankets up to her collarbones and Ava looking down at her. She has a dozen frowns, and this one is somewhere on a line between hurt and horrified._

**_Yeah, well,_ ** _Sara counters, a little bit uncomfortable and a little bit testing out the word, **Three weeks before I had a girlfriend.**_

_Just like that, the anger vanishes. Ava’s beautiful, whether she’s happy or angry, and when she smiles, just then, with the light playing across her face, she’s stunning. Her hair is a dusty-blonde wave drifting down along her shoulder and for a moment the sight of those curls across her pillow reminds Sara of last night in the best possible way._

**_Did you just call me your girlfriend?_ **

_Sara grins and it feels too real to be just the cover she meant it to be._

**_Maybe._ **

_‘Agent Sharpe’ is too official and too straitlaced to giggle but Ava, Ava who is in her bed and smiling at her like Sara is her whole world, is not bound by such restrictions._

**_I mean why not?_** _Sara adds. **John’s fun...**_

_Ava groans and collapses back onto the bed. **Oh, please don’t talk about John.**_

**_Well he is no Ava Sharpe!_ ** _she adds, laughing. Her prey is right where she wants her and Ava laughs again as Sara grabs the blanket, pulling it over them both to hide them in the warmth and darkness._

 

“Hey,” Sara says, thoughtful. Ava hasn’t moved from her bed, and Sara doesn’t want to get up either, even though they both have places they really ought to be.

“Hm?”

“You don’t worry that...” Sara pauses. Reconsiders.

“Sara,” Ava says, her tone so dry it makes the Sahara seem a bit humid, “We may not know yet how much of my personality is pre-selected, but when have you _ever_ known me _not_ to worry.”

She shouldn’t find that funny, and she _knows_ it, but she can’t help it. And the startled, horrified snort of laughter doesn’t seem to be the wrong answer, either, because Ava just grins up at her.

“What is it you think I’m worrying about now?”

“That I might... I dunno. Leave you for someone less complicated.”

Ava considers that for a moment, then says, with astonishingly little malice, “Considering you left me because you thought _you_ had the market cornered on ‘complicated,’ I’m actually not too concerned about that one.”

“Hey,” Sara objects, and slaps the back of her hand against Ava’s shoulder, too light to actually hurt.

“I know, I know. You had reasons.”

“I did.”

Ava grins. “They’re dumb reasons, but you had them.”

“You,” she says, except it’s basically impossible to sound angry when you’re laughing, which is entirely unfair, “Can be _such_ an asshole.”

It feels good, actually, to joke. But Ava’s smile goes a bit fragile, and her eyes skid sideways.

“What?”

“No, it’s. It’s not important.”

Sara _frowns_ and lets her expression speak for her.

“Just.” Ava sighs. “Wondering if that’s part of the whole.” She waves the hand not curled around Sara’s back. “Perfect woman thing.”

For a moment, Sara considers that with the gravitas it deserves. And then the absurdity hits her, as an afterthought. She wrinkles her nose, bewildered, and asks, “Why would _asshole_ be a trait you give to a so-called perfect woman?”

Ava blinks, then frowns. “Oh. That’s... actually a good question.”

Another thought strikes, and it makes Sara smile, slow and maybe just a little predatory. It’s a way to flip Ava’s script from before, and hey, it’s like they say.

Payback’s a bitch.

“You know what else isn’t perfect?”

Ava frowns another of her frowns, one Sara has seen all too many times, back when she was technically still on the Time Bureau’s naughty list. The one that says _whatever you’re thinking is probably a bad idea and is definitely against protocol_.

“All right, I’ll bite. What else isn’t perfect.”

“It’ll be easier to just show you, but you’re gonna have to take us to your apartment.”

“What?” Ava asks, and her puzzled frown is so unintentionally charming it actually makes Sara feel a little weak. “Why?”

“Because the _Waverider_ only has one bathroom.”

 

Somehow, Ava’s apartment is both exactly what Sara expected, and yet also completely different. Perhaps possessed by a bit of anxiety, Ava insists that they put on some clothes, and sets her courier so it’ll put them in her living room. The first thing Sara notices when she walks through, in nothing but a pair of jeans and a zippered hoodie, is the colorful rug under her bare feet.

She scans the room on reflex. A well-worn red sofa is pushed against the wall across from a modest television. Across from their portal is a sliding glass door leading onto a small balcony, and when she turns to look behind her, she sees that a small dining room is at her back, along with the front door and a hallway beside a tiny galley kitchen.

Ava taps her shoulder and Sara moves to let her step in and close her portal. In the process she dances to one side to avoid accidentally walking into a plain but decidedly serviceable coffee table, which currently holds a somewhat beat-up copy of _Brave New World_ and an empty glass that she supposes might have previously held scotch. For a moment she wonders if Ava always liked scotch, or if Sara’s given her a taste for it from all the times they’ve shared some on her ship.

Sara points to the book and gives Ava a slightly queasy look. “So is that research, or just a _really_ unsettling coincidence?”

Ava’s grimace makes Sara’s heart skip a little in sympathetic discomfort. “Coincidence, believe it or not. I haven’t had the stomach to take it back to the library since. You know.”

Sara reaches out and takes her hand, squeezing once.

Ava’s smile is weak, and a bit flimsy, but it’s there, and Sara releases her, looking around again. It takes her a moment to decide what it is that’s surprising her, but it hits her after she’s surveyed the whole room. There’s more personality in the apartment than she would have guessed. Ever since she saw Ava’s so-called parents in Fresno, she anticipated that Ava’s apartment would feel the way that place did. Fabricated and a bit too perfect, like it was orchestrated by a costume and prop designer, not by people living in it. Ava’s apartment doesn’t feel like that. It feels a little bit like its resident—straitlaced and official, but slightly haphazard at the edges, where no one can see. Precise, and well-dressed, but hiding a wealth of warmth and compassion.

But then, maybe it makes sense that Ava’s apartment would be different. She actually _has_ been living here, after all. She’s left a couple smudges on the glass doors and marks on the coffee table where Ava hasn’t used a coaster, for example. There’s a single, somewhat gloomy-looking houseplant sitting on a table beside a desk that clearly is for function over form, as it’s laden with a barely contained storm of papers, post-it notes, and what is clearly a quite rigorous filing system. When she looks past the desk she notes that one of Ava’s blazers, complete with Time Bureau lapel pin, is hanging askew on one of the dining room chairs, perhaps where it was dropped the day before. The table boasts a stack of papers and an office-issued tablet, a sign that the desk’s chaos has annexed new territory, and is capped off with an empty box of pizza and a couple bottles designated for removal.

The odd thought strikes her that with her time courier, Ava might not use her front door very often, and Sara finds herself wondering if her neighbors know much of anything about her.

She shakes off that bizarre line of thinking and sees that there are a few photos on the walls. Only one includes Ava’s parents, one of those uncomfortable family-portrait affairs that was probably taken in a shopping mall, but most of the rest look organic enough that she thinks they might be for real. One catches her eye in particular, one that shows Ava in actual, honest-to-god jeans and t-shirt and pair of aviators, standing in front of a guardrail at what Sara supposes must be some national park. She’s standing with an arm around the shoulders of a woman Sara doesn’t recognize, but they’re both grinning at the camera.

Ava notices her noticing, and steps up behind her, looking over her shoulder at the photo. She has one of her dozen frowns back on, this one thoughtful and a bit uncertain.

“Your ex?”

“Mm. This was at Red Rock, after she moved to Vegas.”

“What,” Sara asks, laughing, “Did you help her move?”

A flush of pink crawls across Ava’s ears.

“Oh my god, you _did_.”

“It was an amicable enough break,” Ava says, clearing her throat. “She found new work and I’m married to my job, so.” She laughs as she says it, but the words come out with just enough bitterness that Sara can hear the repeated argument hiding behind it. “I helped her move, drove her out there, and...” She gestures to the photo. “We did a little sightseeing before I came back.”

“Wow,” Sara says. “Well, now I know for sure she’s real.”

Ava frowns at her. “How can you tell?”

“Way too elaborate a con for her to be an actor. Road trip, sightseeing? And look at this photo.” Sara points to it, drawing attention to the woman’s face. “That smile? It’s obvious she has a sort of lingering sensation of discomfort, but she’s pleasantly surprised to find she’s having a good time. If she were a fake, I guarantee she’d look too happy to be there.”

Ava’s expression twists into something hard to read as she considers the photograph. “You think so?”

“Absolutely,” Sara says. “And now that we’ve verified your ex is a real person and not a plant, let’s not talk about her again and focus on us instead.”

This time Ava’s laugh is easier, lighter, especially when Sara takes her by the wrist and starts drawing her across the apartment. When they cross the threshold into her bedroom Ava still looks a little bit like a stormcloud, albeit one ensnared in the rumpled suit she wore to the _Waverider_ the day before. Her face is a bit too dark and troubled for Sara’s preference.

“Seriously, Sara, what’s this about?”

For a moment she considers playing it coy. That’s a specialty of hers, of course, the cool, composed tease. But it’s only one of the many cards in her hand, and if this is gonna work she needs to pull Ava from wherever her brain’s gone while they’ve been here in her apartment. So when she steps into Ava’s room—practical, but with that same subtle touch of humanity hidden in the small details, like a beautiful framed print of New Mexican mesas hanging on one wall and the array of knickknacks and accessories scattered across the top of a bureau that, with a mirror hanging above it, seems to pull double duty as a vanity—she turns, takes one of Ava’s hands in hers, and takes a couple slow steps backward, drawing Ava along with her toward her bathroom.

“So,” Sara murmurs, and lets her voice dip a bit lower. Ava’s gaze snaps to her, sharp and curious. Sara lifts her free hand to slowly tug at the zipper of her jacket, drawing it down in a slow, languid pull that draws Ava’s attention immediately to her hand and in particular the lack of anything _under_ the hoodie. “What’s your take on shower sex?”

“Uh,” Ava says, the very picture of eloquence, and pulls her gaze back up to Sara’s face with a visible effort of will just as Sara’s shoulders touch the bathroom door and push it open behind her. “Impractical, since, well, running water kind of counteracts the benefits of any sensible foreplay, and potentially a bit dangerous, given the fall risk.” She blinks, her brain clearly catching up a moment behind her mouth. “Sara, we are not going to have sex in my shower.”

“Well not with that attitude we’re not,” Sara says, flashing her a grin.

“Sara. I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Sara insists, backing up until her hips hit the counter. There’s a small array of hair and face products around the sink, and she spares them a glance only long enough to make sure she’s not about to knock something over. “Ava, everything you just said is a hundred percent true.”

“Exactly, which is why we—”

“Should totally do something stupid,” Sara says, interrupting her, “And a bit dangerous. It’s probably going to be ridiculous, and that’s exactly why I want us to do it.”

“ _Why?”_ Ava asks, utterly bewildered. But confusion means she’s not arguing or yelling, and Sara counts that as a victory.

“Because it’s literally impossible to do it perfectly.” Ava blinks, and Sara can see the moment she understands, the moment she _gets_ it, because then she ducks her head in that way she always does when she’s trying not to show that she’s fighting back tears. “And I don’t care what that stupid corporation thinks, Ava. You’re not perfect. You’re just you. And that’s one of the things I love about you.”

“You are...” Ava blows out a breath and shakes her head, and Sara hops up to sit on the edge of the counter, her knees bracketing Ava’s hips.

“Hm?” Sara tucks her hands under the lapels of Ava’s blazer and slides them up, slow, smoothing her palms over the curves of Ava’s chest until she can start pushing the jacket off her shoulders. She grabs Ava by the collar of her shirt to pull her a step closer, and the heat of Ava’s body is tangible through the relatively thin layer of her button-down. Sara can feel the way Ava _trembles_ under her touch, some part of her putting aside the hurt and responding all too readily to Sara’s invitation. Ava rolls her shoulders so that her sleeves slip past her wrists and the dull rasp of fabric on fabric sends a deliciously familiar flare of heat and need down Sara’s spine. The jacket comes off, dropping into a heap on the floor behind her.

“You are _unbelievable_ ,” Ava murmurs, and she says it like she’s trying to say _I can’t understand you_ but the tone in her voice says _god I love you_. She leans against Sara’s body, catching her mouth in a kiss that is as fierce and hungry as their first aboard the _Waverider_ —all fire and only minimal finesse. Sara loops her calves behind Ava’s hips to keep her close and starts tugging at the buttons on her shirt, even as Ava’s hands tangle into her hair, pulling her head back a few inches to tear their mouths apart. Ava’s lips move instead to Sara’s jaw, then the column of her neck, and her kisses are like hot iron against her skin, branding her with something that feels just a little too far from lust to call it anything but love.

“Ava,” Sara says, jerking at the last couple buttons of Ava’s shirt. The command lacks most of the authority she’d intended to give it, since it coincides with Ava’s mouth finding the curve of her breast and taking away most of her breath. “God. Ava.”

“Hm,” Ava says, though she doesn’t pull away. She leaves her mouth where it is, the pressure of her teeth and tongue promising a bruise Sara will probably “forget” to cover later when she’s back on the ship. Ava takes her hands off Sara only long enough to shrug out of her newly unbuttoned shirt and toss it somewhere behind her—Sara thinks it might have ended up in the hallway—before her hands, those perfectly imperfect, un-feminine hands, are back on Sara’s waist. Ava’s thumbs trace over muscles and scars, her fingers finding the subtle divots of Sara’s ribs like they were made for her touch.

“Listen, I’m not gonna do it if you say no,” Sara murmurs, though she is rudely interrupted by a gasp as Ava drops to her knees and trails her mouth lower. Her grip, her _hands_ , are strong enough that she keeps Sara’s hips still when Ava presses a firm, open-mouthed kiss to the front of her jeans. “But I really want to fuck you in your shower.”

The harsh, guttural noise Ava makes against her makes Sara seriously regret putting pants back on, because it’s one more layer separating her from Ava’s mouth.

“ _Christ_ , Lance,” Ava mutters.

“That sounds suspiciously like a _please do_ ,” Sara murmurs. There’s a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth but Ava’s gaze flicks up from between her legs and the look in her eyes makes Sara feel a bit dizzy, her mouth dropping open on a wordless, rather less-than-composed exhale.

“Well Sara?” Ava says, the words almost a purr, and she rests her cheek on Sara’s thigh, impossibly warm through the denim. “You gonna put your money where your mouth is, or what?”

For half a second, her plan seems like way too much work. It would be infinitely easier to just pounce, slam Ava to the floor like a lioness on a damn zebra, and take her apart piece by piece with her hands, her mouth, her body pressed against Ava’s. It’d be easy, too. Ava’s already on her knees, all it would take is to pull her legs up to Ava’s shoulders, a twist to put her off balance, and a quick push off the counter to bear her down to the tile. She can practically feel the heat of their skin pressed together, hear the soft, startled sounds Ava would make as Sara unmakes her. She can imagine the momentary struggle as Ava tries to fight her off—momentary because while they’re almost physical equals, nothing makes a target weaker to you than arousal and desire. It would be all too easy to hold Ava’s wrists to the floor and keep weight on her to prevent her from twisting free.

Sara takes a very deliberate breath, slowly, counting out the seconds (inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for six) until that urge—the one that’s just a little more than sex and a little less than true bloodlust—eases back.

“We’re a bit overdressed,” she says finally, and judging by the way Ava’s eyes darken she hasn’t missed the heated rasp in Sara’s voice that wasn’t there before.

Ava braces her hands on Sara’s knees as she gets up, though she doesn’t actually need to use Sara’s body for leverage, and Sara finds her eye drawn to the supple muscle and tension of Ava’s body as she stands up and undoes the button on her slacks. Something as ordinary as that shouldn’t make Sara’s mouth water, but then there’s all sorts of things she _shouldn’t_ do, and none of those have stopped her yet. A grin flutters around Ava’s mouth as she watches Sara watching her.

“Don’t let me stop you,” she says, and there’s a playful tone to her voice Sara realizes, all in a flash, that she’s missed.

Still, playing along, she huffs out a breath and hops off the edge of Ava’s counter. Ava tucks her hands into the waistband of her trousers like she’s about to slide them off, but she hesitates, watching, as Sara sweeps past her and slips her jeans down her hips, bending to take them off as she heads for Ava’s shower. She can feel Ava’s gaze like a physical thing, hungry and heavy, and she focuses on breathing steady to avoid tripping over her own pants.

Nothing kills the mood like crashing face-first into a towel rack, and she’d really prefer to avoid that.

She shoots a glance over her shoulder and Ava’s expression is somehow simultaneously transparent and opaque. The desire in her eyes is obvious enough, but there’s a tension around her mouth that Sara isn’t sure how to read. It isn’t quite a frown, but it isn’t quite a smile either, and the uncertainty makes Sara pause. It wouldn’t faze her, except that standing naked in her girlfriend’s bathroom and getting an unreadable look is very different from facing it dead-on, clothed, in her office or even her own bedroom. Suddenly she isn’t quite sure what to do with her hands, and she finds herself idly folding her jeans once, then twice, then a third time.

Ava steps up behind her, leaning down to kiss the curve of Sara’s shoulder, her lips straying across scar tissue—Sara tries to remember what fight it came from, but stops after a few discarded guesses—and the touch is so gentle that Sara sucks in an audible breath. A sensation that isn’t desire but something adjacent, something terrifyingly more vulnerable, twists in her gut. Ava’s hands rest on her arms, one straying just long enough to pull Sara’s hair aside, giving herself space to lay kisses across the slope of Sara’s back, trailing along the edge of her shoulder blade to her spine.

“Ava,” she murmurs.

“Got distracted.”

“You don’t sound very remorseful about it.”

Ava laughs softly, the sound warm and thrumming in Sara’s shoulder where Ava’s mouth is resting. It’s impossible not to be _aware_ of Ava like this and Sara decides she likes the sensation of it. Ava’s hands are still on her shoulders, her mouth still on the slope where Sara’s neck and shoulder meet, and Sara can feel the open placket of Ava’s pants against her ass, rough in a way that isn’t unpleasant.

“No, guess not.”

Sara slides a hand up to tangle into Ava’s hair, and when Sara tugs Ava’s breath comes out hot against Sara’s neck.

“Pants off, Sharpe.”

“Yes ma’am.” Ava’s grin is a tangible thing against her back, but then she pulls back and leans a hand on the wall to slip out of her slacks. She did, at least, have the foresight not to put her _shoes_ back on before they went through the portal, for which Sara is grateful, and she gets into the shower, watching with her lip caught between her teeth as Ava stashes her time courier on the counter and follows her.

Her shower isn’t _really_ big enough for them to do this, but Sara tucks herself in against Ava’s chest and generally gets in the way while Ava tries to reach past her and turn on the water, covering the showerhead with her hand while the water reaches a decent temperature. Sara lets her move, but does her level best to distract her, winding a string of kisses down Ava’s chest and sliding her hands over Ava’s sides down to the curve of her butt. It’s a good butt, too, and Sara’s had her hands on enough butts through the years to be a solid judge, if she says so herself. Ava lets out a sharp, startled breath as Sara’s hands slide over her skin and squeeze appreciatively.

“Sara,” she murmurs, not quite chiding.

“Hm?” Sara responds, unfazed. Ava pulls her hand away and warm water sluices down her back. She jolts a little at the sudden, heavy tactile sensation of it on her shoulders and soaking into her hair, and Ava smiles, leaning down to kiss her. Sara slides her hands up to Ava’s hair, her arms resting on Ava’s shoulders, and something in that one, small gesture changes everything. The pressure of Ava’s mouth turns electric and almost overwhelming. When Sara tilts her head back to get a good breath in, Ava’s lips instead trace to her throat, and Sara gives her the space for it, reveling for a moment in the feeling of water pouring over her head and sending rivulets down her forehead.

The temperature change makes Ava’s skin almost clammy, at first, before warming in the water and the steam, and Sara slides her hands over the long, supple slopes of Ava’s shoulders, drawing complex circuitous patterns on Ava’s skin with her nails. With a soft, impatient sound Ava pivots slightly and presses Sara to the tile wall. It’s like ice behind her, and she actually lets out a tiny, very un-assassin-like _yelp_.

She thinks she might have gotten away with it, the sound unnoticed under the sound of the water and Ava’s hungry kisses along her neck and shoulder, except it _echoes_ on the tile and Ava suddenly stops, perfectly still against her.

“Did you just—”

“Don’t laugh, you bastard,” Sara grumbles, but it’s too late, Ava is snickering helplessly, resting her forehead against Sara’s shoulder. Ava’s touch is warm and her hands wind up on Sara’s waist again, gentle but strong. Sara tangles her hands into Ava’s hair, not payback but something adjacent. She finds herself stroking through the wet curls, her fingers trailing along Ava’s ears.

It’s easy, this. Surprisingly so. The desire’s still there, lurking, but the moment of calm, of peace and simple contact, is nice.

“Told you,” she says, as Ava’s finally calming down. “Impossible to do it perfectly.”

“You did,” Ava says, and smiles, and catches Sara’s mouth in a kiss that says a thousand things Sara can only begin to guess at. She holds Sara to the wall, and the pressure of it turns contact and touch into something else, something that’s inexplicably more intense. Ava has always had a way of getting under Sara’s skin, and this is no different.

She slides her knee up between Sara’s thighs and Sara lets out a low, hissing breath, tilting her head back. Wet skin doesn’t slide well but the sticking, damp _press_ of it against her drags a low sound out of her before she can stop herself.

Ava’s grin is audible in her voice. “Thought you were gonna fuck me in my shower, Lance.”

It takes a frankly ridiculous amount of effort to force her brain to check back in and Sara realizes she’s rocking her hips against Ava’s leg, her breath coming out in soft, needy little sounds. She grins and looks up at Ava’s face, and if she lets her inner predator show through in her eyes just then, maybe that’s not that surprising. Ava’s expression turns into something raw and a bit overwhelmed, and Sara leans up a little more, tucking her leg up over Ava’s hip and murmuring in her ear.

“Who says I’m not?”

“ _Jesus_ , Sara.”

Sara laughs softly, drops her leg, and twists. The move is unprofessional and so telegraphed she should be embarrassed, but inside a shower is pretty much the worst place to do anything fast or sudden or else someone’s gonna end up on the ground, and not in a good way. So she twists, and presses Ava to the wall, near the corner, and Ava makes a soft, squeaky sound that Sara decides not to comment on. Let it not be said she isn’t a generous partner, even when fair’s fair. She strings kisses down Ava’s chest and across the subtle curve of her belly.

“You might wanna grab on,” Sara murmurs, carefully dropping to her knees. The tub isn’t cold but it is hard and unforgiving against her knees and she shifts a little, bracing her weight so that her legs are steady on the fiberglass. One of Ava’s hands paws out for the handrail a foot away from her hip but the other finds Sara’s hair, tangling into wet curls and tugging a little as she gets a good grip.

“Sara,” Ava says, as Sara sets both hands on Ava’s hips and shifts closer, nuzzling into the dip where her hip and thigh meet. “Sara, you don’t have to—”

“I don’t,” Sara says, with her lips against Ava’s skin so that she feels the words, more than hears them, and Ava makes a faint, tortured sound that echoes on the tile. “But I want to. You’re _not_ perfect, Ava, but you’re exactly _my_ kind of perfect.”

The fingers in her hair tug again, more deliberate this time. “What,” she says, with a laugh hiding in her voice. “By which you mean an unmitigated disaster with good hair and a snarky smile?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Sara says, grinning, and then she abandons words entirely. Her head is blocking the water from hitting Ava below the waist and she takes advantage of that, running her fingers down and in to touch her. Ava makes a sound that on anyone else would be classified as a _whimper_ , and Sara glances up long enough to see that she’s biting her lower lip, her shoulders actually trembling with tension and anticipation.

Sara grins, holds her open with her thumbs—and really isn’t that a perfect metaphor for how she likes Ava, vulnerable and soft and raw, the way she isn’t around anyone else—and licks into her, earning a soft, strangled sound and another sharp, uncoordinated tug at her hair. In so many things Ava is restrained and polite. It isn’t quite right to say that this is an _exception_ , but like this, on her knees with hot water coursing down her back, it’s safe to say that Sara’s attention is wholly on Ava.

She’s been trained for what’s coming dangerously close to a decade to be _attentive_ and _perceptive_ and here, like this, she’s all the more inclined to push aside the sensation of need and desire that’s prowling around her belly like a hungry, purring _beast_ and _notice_ everything. The way Ava’s fingers keep clenching and unclenching in Sara’s hair. The way her other hand is wrapped so tightly around the metal bar that the veins are standing out stark against her pale skin, the tendons around her knuckles drawn tight with the pressure. The way her breath comes faster, then faster still, until Sara doesn’t hear her breath so much as she hears a quiet, halting series of sounds that aren’t quite moans but something deliciously close. The way, when Sara slides one hand forward and up, pressing a finger carefully inside her, Ava’s legs start to shake in tiny, almost imperceptible tremors.

“Oh god,” she breathes, and somewhere in the back of her mind Sara’s impressed Ava still has enough air and brainpower to speak. But then again, Ava is never anything less than impressive.

Sara hears the dull _thud_ of Ava’s head hitting the tile and when she spares an upward glance, Ava is a vision of surrendered power and flushed skin. She’s gone liquid, almost, limp against the tile as if without it she’d have slid down to the ground.

“Sara, _Sara_ ,” she’s whispering, like a mantra, like a prayer.

Sara shifts her hands, her thumbs replacing her mouth as she pulls back barely an inch or two. Ava makes a sound that is almost anguished, and at the sound of Sara’s low chuckle Ava’s face wrinkles up in irritation.

“I got you,” Sara murmurs, and Ava’s breath hitches, audible when it echoes, just a little. “Hey. Look at me.”

“Oh _god_ ,” Ava says again, but after a moment, she actually does it, tilting her head forward and blearily opening her eyes. Her lower lip practically shows teeth-marks, and her hair is falling around her face in wet, inelegant tangles, but the feeling that roars through Sara then isn’t as simplistic as lust and for a moment it actually takes her breath away. Like the whole world freezes, just for a second, when Ava looks at her like that.

She knew she was _going_ to say something but just like that, it’s gone. Ava gasps like it hurts her throat and comes apart on Sara’s fingers, her whole body arcing like the jump of static electricity. Sara, acting more on instinct than on conscious thought, shifts forward so she can brace Ava’s body with her shoulders and her chest, holding her steady against the wall until Ava tugs at her hair and slowly sinks down onto the floor, sitting curled in the corner with the water pouring over both their heads.

Ava has a dozen frowns, but this one isn’t one Sara knows well yet—it’s strained and overwhelmed and it’s not _quite_ a frown but it’s definitely also not a smile, and not knowing what to do about it scrambles Sara’s thoughts all the more.

Except for one, which comes tumbling out of her mouth like marbles, clacking clumsy but heartfelt all around her.

“You are irreplaceable,” she says, and there’s something hilariously discordant about it when she’s on her knees in Ava’s shower, half a foot away, with her voice hoarse and overcome by something she almost doesn’t dare to give a name. “You hear me?”

Ava’s eyes are wide, still blown a bit dark. Sara moves closer and for a second water slips past her to hit Ava’s face, making her blink and squint.

“I don’t care about the rest. The lab. The other eleven. I don’t care.” Sara cups her hands to Ava’s face and leans close enough to kiss her forehead, her nose, and finally her mouth. “You are completely, utterly irreplaceable.”

“You really mean that,” Ava says, and it hurts Sara’s heart that she actually sounds a bit surprised. “Don’t you.”

“Of course I do, dummy.”

A fragile, fledgling smile lights up Ava’s face like neon lights in the darkness. “Guess you’re right. I’m _not_ perfect.”

“Hm.”

“No one would give a cloned, so-called _perfect_ woman _insecurities_ , now would they.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, thank you for joining me on this crazy feels-y ride!
> 
> I love writing for these characters but honestly I'm a bit low on ideas for them. If you've got prompts of something you'd love to see written for this pairing hit me up on Twitter at @lexraevision? I can't promise I'll use everything I get, but I'd love to chat avalance with folks cuz HNG THESE LADIES I SWEAR...


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